The MIAA Basketball Committee certainly made its feelings about margin of victory known.
On Wednesday morning, the committee voted 14-1-1 to ask the Tournament Management Committee to explore a power ratings formula that does not include margin of victory. This is not the first time the basketball committee voiced its displeasure with regards to the current system.
On May 24, 2022, the committee voted to eliminate the margin of victory component only for it to fall on deaf ears once it reached the association’s tournament overseers.
The lone vote against on Wednesday was Tewksbury athletic director Ron Drouin. Drouin’s objection was not on the premise of eliminating margin of victory, but rather that there is not currently no alternate solution.
“I don’t want to go back to the way things were where it was only about winning percentage,” Drouin said. “That’s the reason for my objection. I just do not want to go backwards.”
St. Mary’s athletic director and committee chair Jeff Newhall voted to abstain on the motion for similar reasons, noting support for the premise but unwilling to vote in favor with no alternative formula on the table. Whitman-Hanson athletic director Bob Rodgers, who sits on the basketball committee, wants to ensure that their opposition to the current format remains known.
“My biggest reason why I wanted to put it out there is that I don’t want our silence to be interpreted that we now think it’s OK,” Rodgers said. “Those who have the power to fix this need to understand that those of us who don’t have the power want it fixed. What we’re doing right now is bad for kids.”
MIAA Basketball liaison Peter Smith and tournament director Jim Quatromoni also took time to discuss the upcoming postseason. The MIAA has 25 sites to choose from for neutral round games that begin in the state semifinals March 10-12.
Sites for games will then be determined based on what makes the most sense geographically for the teams opposing one another. For a fourth consecutive year, the Tsongas Center on the campus of UMass Lowell is set to host the boys and girls MIAA basketball state finals across each of the five divisions.
One potential hiccup involves the UMass Lowell men’s hockey team. Should the River Hawks place in the top four in Hockey East and thus become a host school in their conference tournament, the venue would be unavailable for MIAA use on Saturday, March 15. The MIAA is confident under such circumstances they would still be able to use the venue on Friday, March 14 and Sunday, March 16. Games set for Saturday would likely be moved to either Worcester State or Worcester Polytech Institute (WPI).
When discussing the 2026 tournament format, Worcester Public Schools athletic director David Shea asked to move the regular season cutoff date from its usual Thursday over February vacation to Wednesday.
A move to a Wednesday cutoff would allow tournament brackets to be released on Friday and schools to begin scheduling buses ahead of the weekend when bus companies are often closed. The committee agreed to table conversation of the 2026 format to its next meeting slated for May 21.
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